Friday, February 24, 2012

100th Day of School & so much more!

with some tears, but lots and lots of laughter, learning, and progress!

We celebrated 100 days today (Friday, Febr. 24) and had a great time. As Ellie says, "Today was awesome! I liked counting 100 animals and loved making a snack with 100 pieces of food!"

We started the day with (at least!) 100 calories worth of chocolate donuts ... a true treat around here!

Then we began by reading Luke 15:1-7, the story of the 100 sheep. What a great reminder that God's desire is to rescue the one lost sheep, for "there will be great joy (in heaven) when one sinner turns away from sin." I love that our God wants to rescue the one ... and still loves the 99. This made for a great conversation with the girls!

Want to know what life was like 100 years ago? So did we! We got some books out and looked up some information on the web on life in 1912. Here's what we learned:

Photographs were all in black and white (Ellie noticed this right away)

The model T car had just been invented (1908) and becoming very popular as they were starting to be produced on the assembly line!

The great Titanic ship sank in April 1912, killing more than 1500 people

Harriet Quimby was the first woman licensed pilot and first to fly over the English Channel

WW1 was beginning to brew...

5 million Americans visited cinemas daily!

Billy Sunday was a popular traveling evangelist (and if you want more information on him, ask Aron! He did his master's thesis on this guy while at UNK)

The Girl Scouts of America were formed

New Mexico and Arizona joined the US as official states, making 48 total in the United States

William Howard Taft ("Big Bill") was president from 1908-1912 (and thanks to him, we all now pay income taxes); Woodrow Wilson was elected in November 1912.

And finally ... the girls' very own great-grandmother Josie Mussman Rigby was born on January 6, 1912! Happy 100th birthday to you, Grandma!

After all that learning fun, the girls did some math counting to 100 with snack foods, pompoms, toothpicks, and filling in a missing-numbers chart to 100.

Then we tried to think of 100 animals! I wrote 10 different natural habitats for animals (ocean, desert, rainforest, safari, farm, etc) and had the girls think or search for 10 animals in that habitat. This took us awhile, but it was fun and a huge sense of accomplishment once we completed the chart!

And of course some outside fun: throw & catch 100 times, then 100 jumps with the rope (which caused for much giggling)!

We had a great time! I think after 100 days maybe there's a feeling that we can actually do this homeschooling thing for the rest of the year. : )

In other news, we "celebrated" Mardi Gras by talking about its traditions, music, cajun food, wild costumes, and parades. Trying to find images on the internet that are decent for little eyes was a bit of a challenge, but they are out there! We found some wonderful videos of parades and costumes! We listened to some Mardi Gras jazz, decorated the room some, wore beaded necklaces, and made these fun masks. And then the next day, we talked about Lent!

Ben's PlaySchool (I love these pics!)

He's starting to be more able or willing to entertain himself and play without being so demanding about it. This is a huge improvement from earlier this year, so I'm VERY thankful!

Our New Friends

The girls have spent some time out at the Karges farm where they have milked the cow, collected eggs from the chicken house, and now have met the new TWIN calves! They went out last Sunday to meet them when they were only several hours old! (I wonder if anyone else thinks of "Norman" like I do when I see a newborn calf?!)

Other learning and fun stuff ...

Ellie's focus this week was Z is for Zebra. We had fun painting the black stripes on these zebras, although technically we should have been painting white stripes since the skin of a zebra, we learned, is actually black with white fur stripes!

Abbie's starting to learn multiplication with this dice game. She was to represent the 2 numbers appearing on the face of the dice using the blue manipulatives so she could see the two sets of numbers to calculate.

And this is just for good measure (and to keep us humble!). Classic example of one kid working diligently but the other two totally goofing off! But oh, how fun is that?!

For "Talent Night" at this week's AWANA, the girls sang a duet of "This is My Father's World". Those sweet voices singing a praise to God made me cry! I have no idea where they get their voices OR their courage. Certainly not from their mama! Proves that all good gifts come from above from our heavenly Father.

So that's a lot for 2 weeks and now, I'm tired. I shall allow Calgon to take me away now!